A Study of Gravity and Light
by ToTheEndsOfTheEarth12369
Summary: Tori Lund dreams of the past, when he thinks of his future.
1. Chapter 1

Tori Lund flattens the note discreetly against his thigh, keeping one hand on the keys of his laptop and the other tracing the words as he reads them.

'The Ice-Witch won against Katie'

"-It is customary in scientific measurements to record all the significant digits from the measurements, for example, 1,230,400, but the measurement may have introduced an error which when calculated indicates the last significant digit has a range of values where the most likely one is the "4". The range may be 3-5 so that the last significant digit plus this error may be written as (4,1) meaning 4-1=3 and 4+1=5.-"

Tori opens his PokeNav's communication app, while keeping his notes sectioned to the left of his laptop screen. The physical note is abandoned on the bench beside him and Alice goes back to her own work-hand written, just like her note passing. He shifts his laptop an inch to the right so that she can read the group chat he started.

_Hey Kate, are you alright?_

Sunlight pours in from the square glass windows, pale and white. March in LaRousse City is cool and bright, with a cloudless effect of a place stuck in time. The lecture hall feels stale, and smells like chemicals from the lab next door. It will be several more weeks before end of the fall semester, and several more weeks after that until Tori will be able to get his hands on the telescope equipment held in that lab-he has to make it through Astronomy 2 with Dr. Felix before he could even dream of those kinds of things.

_I'm OK, but my Pokemon are still in the Pokemon Center That witch is a FREAK!_

Alice sighs heavily. She glances behind Tori, at the Ice-Witch.

Tori's eyes flicker over to her too, as if she could hear Katie through the electronic space of his laptop. She couldn't, Tory wouldn't be able to handle that-he would feel guilty. Because at the end of the day, the Ice-Witch won that match fair and square. They all know it.

She must feel the weight of everyone's eyes, today. Adele Capo, Tori reminds himself. Her real name is Adele.

Henry logs onto the conversation, _Calm down Kate are they not going to make it or something?_

_They were badly hurt!_

_Welcome to Pokemon battling_, Henry responds, almost instantaneously, _Every time you step in the battle tower you risk that it's 101._

Dr. Felix has diagramed a formula onto the board, taking a silent moment-a rarity, in his class- to collect an example from off the lecture halls computer. Tori shifts his attention down three rows where Henry is sitting, and he turns around sharply just as Tori sets his eyes on him. He's pissed now. Which is the exact opposite of what they need.

It's better to try and defuse the situation, _But you'll still be able to battle the Tower Tycoon if you win in your next match?_

Alice shakes her head, muttering out of the corner of her mouth, "It's almost the end of the semester!"

Crap, Tori thinks.

_I can't battle anyone else Stupid I'm out for the season_

_Woah woah_, Seth joins the chat, _no reason to take that out on Tori he didn't know_

_Fuck off Seth_

"Ouch," Alice grumbles.

_None of you get it none of you understand that girl is a FREAK she uses SHITTY Pokémon I bet she doesn't even raise them she just summons them from the underworld to do her bidding_

Tori nearly shuts his laptop. Something really awful settles in his stomach, pressing against his lungs to make it hard to breathe. Katie isn't normally like this but, well, she was almost there. She had made it farther than she ever has in the Battle Tower's end of season tournament, nearly to the Tower Tycoon himself. But the truth is that the Ice-Witch is stronger. And, well, Tori guesses he can make excuses for Katie all he wants but at the end of the day he wouldn't put Adele down for being the better trainer.

Tori glances over at her again, sitting by the window at an empty table, on an empty bench. When the weather is like this it illuminates her, and Tori looks, really looks, at the Ice-Witch. At her serious, sharp features. At the way her fingers fly over the keys to her own laptop. One foot propped onto the knee of the other leg. He feels dirty and raw, looking at her. As if he was the one who insulted her and her Pokémon. Nearly six years attending the same schools and he doesn't know a thing about her. Nearly six years of watching her vaguely from affair, like he does with everything else he finds alien. Because despite what he went through in his childhood, he's not strong or brave.

No one responds to Katie's message.

Tori hates it, suddenly. The competition and the battles and how easy it is for students to enroll in Tower tournaments. He hates how famous they all get, the online nicknames, the popularity and social media and all the things that target people in their daily lives when they weren't meant to. He wants to protect them, somehow, protect Katie and Adele and all the other students who decide to compete. But he can't and he wouldn't because those are not his lives to live, they are theirs.

When Tori dreams, he dreams of stars and meteors and Deoxys. He dreams of eons of empty space, trillions of miles expanding outward into the occupation of forever, an ever-changing universe with ever changing possibilities, and somewhere in it, a Pokémon who had captured the better part of his life. Dr. Felix's class is only one step in a million, during a lifetime so small and insignificant that his time spent on earth will equate to one nanosecond in the time the universe has existed. Tori can only do what little he can with the nearly nonexistent life he has been given, and he will live it while watching, dreaming of space.

What does Adele Capo dream of? Does she dream of open, empty space? Does she dream of the texture of the ice on Saturn's rings? Or does she dream of humanity, of human things, of relationships and coffee and careers and warm socks and growing old under stadium lights?

Tori doesn't know because he doesn't know her. Because, like space, he has watched her from affair.

"Oh, Katie," Alice breathes.

One last message has appeared on the group chat, highlighted in red, _screw her seriously_

Tori exits out of the group chat just as the bell rings.

But when Tori turns around, Adele is gone-her table empty, her bench pushed under it. As if she had never been there at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**All Rights Reserved **

Students enrolled at LaRousse prep schools are only allowed to participate in two functions of the Battle Tower-one tournament in the fall time and one in the spring, corresponding with the fall and spring semesters. Nearly the entire student body participates, but very few make it to the later rounds. Students aren't Pokémon trainers, they have responsibilities above training, but they make sport out of it. There are rallies and Poeknav groups and battles which are live streamed on the library computers. They call the top competitors in the school the 'elite four' even though there is nothing binding them together except animosity.

Lots and lots of animosity.

"Hi,"

Her eyes are sharp. Maybe it's in her thin eyebrows, or the collection of skin pulled just on the bridge of her nose. Maybe it's because of how dark the brown in her irises are, like looking into a deep ravine. Intelligent, searching. She doesn't smile or lean back. She just looks.

A shutter runs through Tory's entire body.

"Can I, uh. Can I sit with you?"

It takes a moment, but she shrugs, "Yeah, sure."

Adele pulls a few books from the other side of the table, calmly closing them with papers stuck in the margins as bookmarks. Most of those pages are folded in intricate shapes, vague looking Pokémon peeking out over the covers of several calculus books.

Tory puts his bag on the floor with a heavy -plop- as he settles into the chair across from her, "You do origami?"

"No, not me."

"Oh, okay."

She nods, keeping her eyes on the screen of her laptop.

"Are you taking calculus?"

"Yeah,"

"Cool, who are you taking it with?"

"Blackwell."

"Yeah, I took it last year. With Randell though."

"It's probably required for you."

"Yeah it is. Yeah."

Silence falls again.

"Blackwell only teaches advanced classes."

She nods slowly, "It's multi-variable."

"Multi-variable calculus?"

"Yeah,"

"Wow," Tory breaths. "And your taking astronomy at the same time?"

"Yup,"

Silence.

Tory leans forward on his elbows. The library is nearly empty now, the cafeterias closed, the sun setting, and he will have to watch the clock to leave before the trains shut down at midnight. Tory isn't sure how long the library stays open because he's never lived on campus, and to be honest, it's a lot more comfortable to study from home. He wonders if she lives in the dorm or if she lives somewhere on the island. He wonders why she's all by herself at nearly seven at night, hidden in the back of the library where they can't even see a window.

Tory rubs his hands together, trying to compose his thoughts, "I just wanted to come over here and congratulate you, you know, on your win. It's not every day someone's in the top eight of a Battle Tournament."

She looks at him, really looks, the wrinkle between her eyes deepening, her long brown hair falling over her shoulder and, oh. He doesn't understand what it is about her. He doesn't know her, but he wants to. He wants to so badly that it hurts, "Thank you."

"Yeah," It's not much to go on. Tory scrambles to keep the conversation going and keep that eye contact, "You welcome. I-"

"-Are you going to study?"

"What?"

"This is a study table in the library."

"Oh! I didn't mean interrupt, I just-"

"-It's fine. You haven't taken anything out."

Tory fumbles with his bag. The reality is that he should be studying, not chasing after this girl. He looked for her for hours, honestly, once his last class got out. He should have been doing something productive with his time. If he were his father he would have. But he's not nearly the man his father is, so he chased a girl who doesn't even want him around, "I, yeah, we have a paper due in English Lit tomorrow."

She shakes her head, "You could have chosen one of the other tables."

"Huh?"

"There are other tables open," she rolls her eyes around the room, "All of them, actually."

It's not like she's wrong. But Tory couldn't even dream of telling her that he tracked her down all day, to what? Tell her she did a good job? She creamed Katie, of course she did a good job. She's a member of the elite four, she doesn't need to be told that, "Well, I…"

She glares at him, sharp and serious, "Your friends with Kathrine Brown."

Tory tries to wipe his sweaty palms on his pants, "Yeah she's…How do you…"

She blinks at him, slowly, something like irritation flickering across those eyes, "We've been in the same school since we were ten, Lund."

Tory's heart skips a beat. She knows his name.

"She put you up to this?"

"What? No, I'm-"

"I'm sorry that her Pokémon were hurt so badly," Adele says, those serious eyes narrowing down at her laptop, her hands stalled over the keys, "She only planed for one of my Pokémon's types and not for a secondary type advantage. I wouldn't hold back because she planned poorly, and I wouldn't feel guilty that her Pokémon suffered because of that. You can go tell her that."

Tory feels like his lungs couldn't expand if he wanted them to. His mind races through thousands of words that he couldn't even form, "I'm not-"

"And tell her to stop texting me. Go and tell her that if she wants to harass me, she can do it in person. And if she doesn't stop, I'm going to the dean."

"I'm not here for Katie, Adele."

Could it be possible for that wrinkle to get any deeper, "Then why are you here?"

"Because I…" I think that your beautiful and I want to get closer to you, Tory thinks, "I wanted to congratulate you."

She snorts and leans back further in her seat. There is something…sad. She looks sad when she does not look angry. Tory wants to lean forward the smooth that skin between her eyes with his thumb, to reassure her of…what? "Go back to your own side, Lund. Your friends are there."

"Aren't we friends?"

"No," Adele tells him, going back to her laptop, her nails tapping on the keys but not pressing, as if she does it just for the noise, "You can leave now."

Tory stands awkwardly. He feels awkward and strung out, and not entirely sure what just happened. He always knew her to be this way- in class she gives short, precise answers, only spoke when spoken to, with few friends and even fewer as the years went on. She's the least liked of the elite four, and the strongest. She has nicknames, lots of them, not just the ice-witch, and of course she knows them. Of course she hears about them. And even though Tory and Alice and Henry and Seth try to keep their voices down, never saying it when she is in hearing distance, other students wouldn't be so kind.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know Katie was texting you. She can be extreme-"

"-She wants me to die."

Oh.

Katie, no, Tory thinks. She hadn't been serious. Tory reassured himself all day that she hadn't been serious. She was just upset, she has a lot of pride, and never, never did he think Katie would reach out to Adele. He thinks of the terrible things she said about Adele Cato. He wonders if, when he watched her in class, Katie was texting her at the same time. Insults. Death threats.

"I use ghost Pokémon, but that doesn't mean I want to be one. There's nothing wrong with us. We're-"

She stops.

Tory waits but she doesn't go on.

"I'm sorry."

"Just go away."

"Okay."

Tory doesn't know what to do with his hands. He doesn't know what to do with his body. If he walks away without saying something then it's like not consoling her. He wants to come up with something meaningful and truthful but…she's not asking for it. She's asking to be left alone. So all he can do is honor her wish.

He leaves her there. He leaves her at her table, with the books all laid out on top of it in a semicircle, a purple Driftloom sticker on her laptop, all those little origami Pokémon sticking out of the pages. Her foot is propped up on the knee of the other leg. Her fingers tap restlessly on the keys. In the reflection of the fluorescent lights she looks serious and sharp, like the edge of an ice pick.

Next time, Tory will know the magic words to make her feel better. And if there are no magic words, then he will find something.

Next time, Tory will be prepared.


End file.
